Template:Critical theory, modernism and the death of objective truth: Difference between revisions

Template:Critical theory, modernism and the death of objective truth (view source)

Revision as of 21:50, 12 April 2023

278 bytes added , 12 April 2023

no edit summary

Amwelladmin

Bureaucrats, Interface administrators, Administrators

83,229

edits

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{Quote|“People of every age seem to be in a sort of post-truth scenario here, where I get to pick my own facts. There are a lot of facts out of there, I get to pick the ones that I like, and I can go with those, and nobody can really tell me that those aren’t the facts because it’s my truth. Those are my facts, and don’t tell me they’re not.”
-:— Robert Prentice,<ref>https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/Directory/Profiles/Prentice-Robert</ref> quoted in {{author|Gabrielle Bluestone}}’s {{br|Hype}}}}
+:— Robert Prentice,<ref>[https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/Directory/Profiles/Prentice-Robert Robert Prentice], quoted in {{author|Gabrielle Bluestone}}’s {{br|Hype}}</ref>}}
 Most conspiracy theories contain a grain of [[truth]]. Some are completely true. There has to be ''something'' for the credulous to glom onto.
@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 Well, not ''quite'' — “it is true that there is no truth”  refutes itself, after all — but rather that the idea of “[[objective truth]]” is ''incoherent''.  There is no [[objective truth]], ''because the very idea makes no sense''.
-“Things” are properties of the universe. They have (we presume) continuity, whether we see them or not, and whether we talk about them or not.<ref>[[David Hume]]’s causal scepticism put paid, centuries ago, to the idea that we can be sure about this.</ref> “Truths” are ''propositions'' about ''things''. Propositions put things into a relationship with each other: “the cat sat on the mat”. “Gordon is a moron”. “Propositions” are a property of language: they only exist within the framework of a language.
+“Things” are properties of the universe. They have (we presume) temporal continuity,<ref>Though even temporal continuity is a function of language: computer code has no [[tense]], and therefore no temporal continuity.</ref> whether we see them or not, and whether we talk about them or not.<ref>[[David Hume]]’s causal scepticism put paid, centuries ago, to the idea that we can be sure about this.</ref> “Truths” are ''propositions'' about ''things''. Propositions put things into a relationship with each other: “the cat sat on the mat”. “Gordon is a moron”. “Propositions” are a property of language: they only exist within the framework of a language.
 Thus, things ''aren’t'' true or false: ''only propositions about things are''. Propositions are prisoners of the language they are articulated in. Beyond it, they are only marks on a page.
@@ Line 16: / Line 16: @@
 See?<ref>Translated from Persian into English: “the cat sat on the mat.”</ref>
-Truths are propositions. Truths, therefore are a function of the language they are articulated in. A truth cannot “transcend” its language. It doesn’t make sense.<ref>This is not even to take the point that, thanks to the [[Goedel|indeterminacy of closed logical sets]], no statement in a natural language can possibly have a unique, exclusive meaning.</ref> There is the further difficulty that “language” itself is an indeterminate, incomplete, unbounded thing; no two individuals share exactly the same vocabulary, let alone the same cultural experiences to map to that vocabulary, let alone the same metaphorical schemes. It is what {{author|James P. Carse}} would describe as “dramatic” and not “theatrical”.<ref>In his {{br|Finite and Infinite Games}}.</ref> This makes the business of acquiring and communicating in a language — where meaning does not reside in the textual markes, but in the indeterminate cultural milieu in which the communication occurred — all the more mysterious. That we call it “communication”; that we infer from that a lossless transmission of information from one mind, is a deep well of mortal frustration.
+Truths are propositions. Truths, therefore are a function of the language they are articulated in. A truth cannot “transcend” the language it is expressed in, because that language gives the proposition meaning. It doesn’t make sense for the truth to transcend it's medium.<ref>This is not even to take the point that, thanks to the [[Goedel|indeterminacy of closed logical sets]], no statement in a natural language can possibly have a unique, exclusive meaning.</ref> There is the further difficulty that “language” itself is an indeterminate, incomplete, unbounded thing; no two individuals share exactly the same vocabulary, let alone the same cultural experiences to map to that vocabulary, let alone the same metaphorical schemes. It is what {{author|James P. Carse}} would describe as “dramatic” and not “theatrical”.<ref>In his {{br|Finite and Infinite Games}}.</ref> This makes the business of acquiring and communicating in a language — where meaning does not reside in the textual markes, but in the indeterminate cultural milieu in which the communication occurred — all the more mysterious. That we call it “communication”; that we infer from that a lossless transmission of information from one mind, is a deep well of mortal frustration.
 This is its debt to [[post-modernism]], and it is a proposition that contemporary rationalists find hard to accept, whether hailing from the right — see {{author|Douglas Murray}}’s {{br|The Madness of Crowds}} for an articulate example — or the left — see {{author|Helen Pluckrose}}’s patient and detailed examination in {{br|Cynical Theories}}.